The invention relates to a method and a device for the automated driving of a motor vehicle.
The expression “driving of the motor vehicle” encompasses firstly the steering of the motor vehicle (following a course of a road, orienting the motor vehicle within a lane, lane change maneuver), which is also designated as transverse driving, and secondly the control of the driving speed of the motor vehicle (acceleration, reduction of the driving speed, emergency braking, maintaining the driving speed), which is also designated as longitudinal driving.
A device of the type mentioned is known from DE 10 2010 022 433 A1. According to that, a driver assistance unit in a fully automatic assistance mode can perform the driving of the vehicle completely independently. During the journey, the driver of the motor vehicle then does not have to operate either the steering wheel or the pedals of the motor vehicle and can therefore devote his/her attention to other things for a comparatively long period of time, such as the operation of an infotainment system, for example.
Fully automatic driver assistance systems are useful for example in connection with driving the motor vehicle in a backup if the motor vehicle in stop-and-go traffic can be driven only very slowly, generally at walking speed, and this is also possible only at relatively long time intervals. With corresponding monitoring of the surroundings of the motor vehicle, it is likewise also conceivable to enable the fully automatic driving of a motor vehicle during other driving maneuvers, for instance when parking, or else even at higher speeds.
Even during the automated driving of the motor vehicle by said device, it must be made possible for a driver to be able to influence the driving, in order for example to be able to turn off at an exit with the motor vehicle if the driver has spontaneously decided to take a different journey route, or to drive with the motor vehicle offset with respect to a center line of a lane (so-called transverse offset) in order to be able to look past a vehicle ahead. The fundamentally different functioning of fully automated systems in comparison with systems of partial automation (which carry out e.g. exclusively a driving speed control) or manual driving calls for a distinguished form of human-machine communication. The tasks of the human in the fully automated control loop of driver, vehicle and environment move away from focusing on the primary driving task toward system monitoring tasks. For this purpose, the human must be afforded an overview of what driving maneuvers can currently be carried out by the fully automatic driver assistance system and what possibilities remain available to the driver for influencing the driving maneuver currently being performed.